Blood Royale
Blood Royale was a board game based on medieval Europe, published by Games Workshop in 1987 and designed by Derek Carver (who also designed another Games Workshop board game, Warrior Knights). The game is currently out of print.
Game play combined management of a medieval dynasty (with rules for character creation, and centred on the creation of treaties through arranged marriages) with territorial expansion and financial reward. The winner was the player who ultimately made the most money; the other games mechanisms provided means and obstacles to this end.
As with the Games Workshop edition of Warrior Knights, the components were of a high quality and the mechanisms were innovative for their day; the designer was a well known name; the dynastic rules in particular provided a high degree of involvement for players. Criticisms of the game have centred on the length of time it may take to play.
However the game was published near the end of the time when Games Workshop was interested in publishing board games outside what would become its core milieu of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, and it was quickly withdrawn.
In 2005 Fantasy Flight Games acquired its rights with others old GW titles like Warrior Knights, Talisman, Fury of Dracula, etc. but after more than two years the planning for a new edition of Blood Royale was suspended for unknown problems which are probably related to the difficulty in shortening the game’s extremely long playtime.